EFA STUDIO PROGRAM: Member Artists
Regina Parra
Since antiquity, Western imagination has found many ways to characterize women, their bodies, their attitudes, and their sexuality. In a man’s world, the feminine has been and still is repeatedly posited as a source of deviations from the norm, and therefore as a danger to collective whenever possible. Confronting this ancient construct, which has long perpetuated patriarchal and sexist thought, Regina’s practice aims to create a series of works establishing a critical feminist position.
Painting, performance, and video are Regina’s main poetic instruments to address issues such related to the female body, its pleasure, freedom, and vivid insubordination. Her early research focused on colonialism and the lasting injustices of patriarchy and capitalism in Brazil, producing works that ask the viewer to rethink official narratives by focusing on the marks left on those who have been forgotten, subjugated, enslaved, and exploited. In 2013, Regina was diagnosed with a disease that causes loss of muscles and strength. This biographical data ends reverberated, in different ways, in her works. The body took on a more central role in her research and concerns. Since then, Regina’s focus has been on the woman's social body, as a place of affirmation and a power.
